


The Stranger, The Better

by BrownieFox



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Archivist!Jon, Gen, Happy Ending?, Stockholm Syndrome, Stranger!Jon, Torture, becoming, he/they/her Nikola, losts of music, monster edition, sorta - Freeform, things are not nice to Jon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25981654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrownieFox/pseuds/BrownieFox
Summary: In which Nikola doesn't need Jon's skin to complete the ritual, but rather a dance partner. Whether this is better or worse is uncertain.
Relationships: Nikola Orsinov & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 13
Kudos: 182





	The Stranger, The Better

Jon doesn't know when he’d been untied. When the blindfold had come off. When Nikola tied their hands together.

When they had started dancing. 

Well, to say they are dancing would be a severe overstatement. Nikola spins around, seeming to have little to no care for Jon hanging from her hands. The ground is covered in broken shards of glass that cut up Jon’s bare feet, slicing them open, drops of blood spattering around the dance floor. Nikola swings Jon around like he is light as air and there is nothing Jon can do about it. 

“Come now, it’s just a waltz, Archivist - can I call you Archivist? It’s very simple, see? One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three!”

They twirl around, Nikola’s voice loud and cheerful in Jon’s ears, and yet only just barely audible over the calliope. She lifts him up and into the air with a wrench of Jon’s arms that makes him cry out, fresh hot tears being forced from his eyes. He can't find it in himself to be ashamed or embarrassed that he’d started crying long ago. He feels he has a right to it, considering his situation. 

They dance and Jon’s feet become mutilated flesh until the darkness, blessedly, consumes him and spirits him away from the pain and the music. 

oOo

“Am I going too fast for you, Archivist? Oh, you’re a fast learner, you must be! The Eye saw to that!”

The ground is hot coals that burn Jon’s feet. Whatever they are dancing now is quick, and Jon can't hear the music they are supposedly dancing along to. 

Polka, the Eye supplies, they are dancing to a Polka. It is too fast and too quick and Nikola seems to start and stop whenever they want to. Jon’s feet drag across the coals. His feet cry out in pain that he echoes with his own voice. Every time he screams, Nikola laughs and laughs and laughs as if he is telling the best joke.

“Why?” He manages to say, and Nikola hums in a reply that means absolutely nothing.

“Listen to the music, Archivist, or we’ll start to fall behind!”

oOo

After each ‘dance lesson’ Nikola has Jon tied back to the chair, the blindfold and gag put back in place. 

Jon thinks his eyes are part of his connection to the Eye, which makes a lot of sense as soon as it occurs to him. When he is dancing with Nikola, the injuries he endures fade into the background and some even begin to heal. As soon as the blindfold is set in place, however, the blood just slowly seeps out of cuts and the pain is thick and in focus, the only thing he _can_ focus on.

His heart beats in his chest, the only sound other than the never-ending calliope, and it is a meager comfort that it is still there.

oOo

The whip strikes Jon’s back in a pattern, he realizes.

Nikola dances across a bed of thorns with another mannequin, continually shouting for Jon to pay attention. Each time he says that, Jon finds he can’t help but to look up and watch each twist and turn and lift they do in the dance.

The whip strikes and for each there are two steps that Nikola takes, two pauses, a two-breath spinout before rejoining hands with the mannequin.

The mannequin’s face is familiar in a way Jon does not want to think about.

He’s glad that his feet get a break from the torture, but his back isn’t too happy about it. They won’t give him a chance to clean up his blood or offer bandages he can use on his own. Nikola insists his fellow Strangers do it instead, saying that Jon’s skin is too precious to allow callouses to form and more scars to marr it. 

Jon doesn’t understand why Nikola does all this, why he would worry over the condition of Jon’s skin, and then pull Jon out of the room and slice open the bandaged wounds all over again.

He isn’t sure he wants to understand.

For now, though, he has a distraction from the pain as he picks out the lengthy pattern to the strikes.

It’s like memorizing pi. A never ending series of differences, but there is some kind of sense to it, if you listed pi long enough. Where the threes and sevens and ones have a cadence you can follow. Rattling off pi had been one of the few positive things Jon had been known for in elementary school, and much of it still stuck with him even now.

The whip cracks, Jon gasps in pain, and Nikola spins across the floor.

oOo

Nikola puts their hands on Jon’s waist and lifts him in the air for a moment, a moment of sweet relief, before he is on the ground again.

The floor this time is just ice. Jon had thought it a blessing at first, a small mercy today while he prays for someone to save him, prays to the Eye to give him the power to break out of here. As it turns out, dancing on ice is hard. He’s forced to hold onto Nikola for support and to stop himself from falling. His feet are numb to the point of pain, a creeping cold the slowly forces its way farther and farther up his legs every second he stands on the ice. 

His movements are clumsily as he tries to keep pace with Nikola, slowed by the environment. His heart is loud in his ears, stuttering at an awful rhythm, and he twists with each beat to try and not fall on his face. His hands find Nikola’s again when they come back up and he holds them for dear life.

“One-two-three, one-two-three,” Nikola whispers the whole time and Jon finds himself muttering it under his breath. After an hour of this, the words have become utter nonsense in his ears, but still he says it along with them.

Nikola’s face doesn’t change expression - or at least the one they are currently wearing doesn’t - but Jon Knows they are smiling.

Jon makes sure to scowl right back and dig his fingers into the unfeeling plastic, wishing it would bring the other creature pain.

oOo

His joints ache.

They pop as he is untied from the chair, blindfold and gag removed. He spits the taste of cotton off of his tongue to little avail. There are two Strangers in the room with too many teeth and too many fingers and faces that no human would have. They look human, though, enough so that for the first few (many many many) times Jon’s blindfold was removed, he thought for a moment that he’d been saved.

Now, though, he knows how to recognize the signs. He knows nobody is coming. And he knows these are two Gymnasts who slipped from skin to skin through the show, showing off tricks that each one carried.

He stands and his joints feel stiff. He forces them to move, forces legs and arms to straighten, lacing his fingers and bringing them above his head, hearing them crack. The Gymnasts seem to have no problem letting Jon attempt to stretch a bit before the ‘dance class’ starts.

He still isn’t sure what Nikola wants. Still they dance with Nikola humming happily each time she sees him. 

Jon wonders what the floor will look like this time. Mud, perhaps, that clings to his feet and makes it almost impossible for him to move? Splinters of wood that become lodged in his feet, a sliver of which he’ll swear he can still feel in there for months to come (if he lives that long)? A nice thin pool of water with electricity running through it? 

The same surface has come up before, but when and why seems completely arbitrary. Maybe that was the point, that the floor had no point. 

As he is led to the dance floor, still rolling out the stiffness of his shoulders, Jon Knows it’s a return of the classic broken glass.

He doesn’t feel particularly upset or relieved at this. It simply is what it is.

oOo

Can you pin down the second, in a chrysalis, that a caterpillar becomes a butterfly? 

Oh you see the final result, as it bursts free from its shell and spreads its wings, but what is it in the middle? Can it be defined as either? 

Jon doesn’t realize he is in a cocoon until he dips Nikola.

He hardly has to think about it as one of his hands finds the center of her back and she slides down, head turned up to the ceiling. She is far taller than him, and yet she made the move still look graceful and elegant.

She is back up in a moment, spinning Jon again, and it is all Jon can do to hold onto her, reeling from what had just happened, of the brief moment where he had been leading the dance. He isn’t any more, Nikola in control again, but she hadn’t told him or indicated for him to do any of that.

He’d dipped her because that was what he was supposed to do in that part of the song. She’s dipped him in that part before, and he had recognized it, and realized she wasn’t going to do it, and had taken it upon himself to make sure it was there.

His heart hammers in his chest, and each beat lines up with their feet as they dance across the floor. He’s half out of it, and yet when he looks down muscle memory has taught his feet how to keep moving, a mirror to Nikola. 

He realizes he is not being tortured, not like he thought.

Jon looks up at Nikola’s blank face and knows she would be grinning if she could, so pleased with his performance, no, with his _practice_ finally kicking in.

The wax museum is Jon’s chrysalis, and he isn’t sure how far along he is to whatever it is Nikola is trying to make him into.

And it frightens Jon how little he cares, as the music pulses comfortingly right beside his heart beat.

oOo

He asks at one point.

“I thought you needed my skin.” Jon says. They are not dancing this time, Jon following Nikola around as they checks on how the other preparations are going. They will dance, soon, of course, but not just yet

“An Archivist is an Archivist, whether the flesh is still in there or not.” Nikola replied and Jon nods.

“But it’s…” Jon’s voice trails off as he taps a finger to his arm. It makes a clinking sound. 

“Oh don’t worry about it, Archivist! You are still you, and it will work! I was going to skin you originally, but then I realized what my dance was missing.” They have a mouth today. Two, in fact, and they both grin at him with teeth that are all molars, “I needed a partner to dance with.”

oOo

He learns to hear the song of the Stranger. 

It is light and quick, moving fast. It is hard to tell what the key or time signature is. Not that the sound of the Stranger necessarily has either of those things, but it would be impossible to describe what he could hear in words, and that was the simplest way to describe it, the most understandable.

Of course, the music is not meant to be understood. Just heard and danced to. He spends all the time in his room now listening to it, memorizing it, going over his part to play. He will dance what he must for the Unknowing. It is all the Archivist is now, a being of porcelain and ball joints and dance. He archives the knowledge of this, sees what no Eye has ever seen before, and feeds both of his gods.

It is when the Archivist sleeps - the rarity it is now - that he hears the soft sound, like a flute.

It plays in his dreams as the Eye stares down and the Archivist Watches. He has not taken a live statement in some time, only retreading the same few people’s dreams and feeding their fear to his god. The music plays as he Watches, existing in this space like a solo performance.

When he wakes up, he can still hear it, but it has faded to the background, nearly drowned by the song of the Stranger. But oh, the Watcher’s music persists, now that he knows what to listen for. You have to listen closely as it sits in the background, sometimes almost silent, like it is listening and adjusting to the sound of all the others.

Which gives the Archivist pause at the thought.

He focuses on his hand, on the red stain on his porcelain. It was a scar, at one point, but now it is just a part of him. But it still carries the hissing sound of the Desolation. He was marked by it, and he can hear its song, a sizzling that seems to vibrate the scar.

There is much The Archivist can hear now.

He was designed to.

oOo

It is in the middle of one of their final rehearsals that the Archivist realizes it.

As they dance, the song of the Stranger grows louder and louder, threatening to overtake the downbeats of the Web, the light touches of the Eye, and quick and hard to pin down flourishes from the Spiral. The Archivist has to listen closely for the war drums of the Hunt, of feet pounding against the forest floor in pursuit, in chase, to hear when he’s supposed to lift Nikola into the air. Perhaps Nikola is so intune with the the Stranger’s song she doesn’t need the others, but the Archivist has learned how they add to the dance. If the chords that should be discordant, that don’t line up, are apart of the same song.

It’s all a part of the same song.

A symphony is not composed of one instrument. 

Song of the Stranger and the Song of the Slaughter and the Song of the Dark are all the same. Different parts, different movements even, but one cannot exist without the other.

And the Archivist catches Nikola as he comes back down knowing that the Unknowing will never work. 

Nikola smiles up at him, and he smiles down at them a show-winning smile of too-white teeth. 

He doesn’t tell her, because their part in the song is to try and stumble along without the other instruments, to have their few measures of a solo, a few measures of the melody, before being reminded what they must be accompanied by the others. 

It brings a kind of joy, a kind of relief to the Archivist that he can’t quite explain.

His bare feet do not notice the blood-drenched floor anymore.

He does not care for the doomed nature of their dance.

He was reshaped for this moment, and he will do as he was made for.

The two of them spin across the floor.

oOo

Someone is interrupting their dance.

The Stranger’s music has never been louder. It vibrates through everything that makes up the Archivist. This is their moment alone from the rest of the fears, the moment when Nikola shines at her brightest and the Archivist leads her through the steps of their dance. She can dance it with all the passion and love it deserves. Would she, if she knew it’s inevitable fate? 

The Archivist doesn’t know. 

What he does know is that somebody is on their dance floor. It has its final flooring, soft skin that they can glide across with ease. 

“How rude,” Nikola says as they sway in place before the man. He’s familiar, and the Archivist knows that they know him, but the music takes up so much presence it’s hard to focus on anything else, “You were not invited. Although I suppose we do have room for one more audience member.”

“Wh-what, I don’t-” The man says, stutters, looking unsure of himself, of where he is. 

“Ah, it’s alright, come come, let’s get you a seat. It’s too late to join the chorus, I’m afraid.” Nikola swings them even closer to the man, and his eyes track the Archivist.

“Wh- J-, you’re, we thought,” The man attempts words and stumbles back away from them. Nikola tuts and drops her hands from the Archivist’s. The music is just as loud, but the crescendo they’d been leading up to stays where it is, paused for the moment.

“Oh my! You have something in your hand there! Might I see it?” The man takes more steps back, and as the Archivist watches Nikola’s form twists and shrinks as she takes on the appearance of another. Somebody with round glasses and long curly hair. “Please, Tim, may I see it? I’ll take very good care of it, I promise. You don’t even know what it is!” Nikola continues to approach the man. 

“S-Sasha? Is that, is that what you look like?” He says, and the name Sasha sticks in the Archivist as he continues to look at Nikola’s new costume. There is something familiar about it, familiar in a way that he Knows he wouldn’t have realized before he had Become. Sasha, this was what Sasha looks like.

“Yes, Tim, it’s me, now give me that funny little box, why don’t you?” Nikola coos. The man, Tim, does not retreat as Nikola finally gets close enough to take the thing out of his hand. She smiles with perfect doll teeth and her form becomes her regular magnificent self. Tim gasps and reels back, his fear filling the dance floor. 

“What? But, S- J- Jon, you saw her, you, she was…” A hand flies to Tim’s head as he tries to make sense of it all. 

Jon. 

He hadn’t thought of that name in a while.

Not since he’d been brought in by Nikola, not since she chose him to be her dance partner. Or perhaps, he did at one point, but not for some time. 

Jon.

Jonathon.

“Oh, do not worry about him, it will all be alright now.” Nikola soothes Tim, but the man just looks more confused, not looking at her but staring down the Archivist. 

“Jon, there’s, we- we,” Tim makes a frustrated noise and pulls at his hair, but he keeps staring. Staring, with piercing eyes. The Song of the Eye comes off of him. Not pure, like when Jon can hear it in himself, but like a staticky recording. Like it is playing from a cassette. 

“Come, Archivist, we haven’t time to waste. The show must go on!” If her eyes could move, she would be winking at him right now. She puts her hand out, the one with the small black box - detonator, he knew it was a detonator - lying in her palm. The Archivist reaches to take her hand, they have a dance to complete, one that Nikola has been perfecting for years and the Archivist is honored to be a part of. 

“Jon,” Tim pleads, and it sounds so very wrong coming from his mouth, choked and desperate even though he has only half an idea what he’s trying to ask, who he’s trying to ask it from. The Archivist’s name sounds right from Tim’s mouth, but he knows it should be said with more venom.

The Archivist looks at Nikola’s waiting hand. He knows he’s supposed to take it and finish what they’ve started.

But… he doesn’t think he wants to. 

What does the Archivist want?

What does _Jonathon Sims_ want?

He looks at Tim, who is struggling to regain himself, and knows. 

The Archivist reaches for Nikola’s hand and takes the detonator. He turns quick and sure and sharp and with his other hand grabs Tim’s shirt. They don’t have much time, but he’s caught Nikola by surprise and it is perhaps the only thing he has going for him. 

He bodily drags Tim out of the Wax Museum, Nikola and many other Strangers hot on their heels, but for months the Archivist has learned how to be quick and nimble, how to listen to the Song that surrounds everything and use it to anticipate when to move, when to stop, when to rush forward like his life depends on it. It does. 

They clear the edge of the wax museum and Jon squeezes the detonator.

The world erupts in noise.

The music stops.

“Jon?!”

Tim shouts, all the anger Jon had forgotten filling the man’s voice. At some point, Jon had gotten so that he was carrying the taller man in his arms, bridal-style. Tim seems affronted by this. Jon opens his mouth to say something, but he can tell the moment that Tim realizes that Jon’s arms are too smooth, too cold. 

Jon’s arms are too busy holding the man to do anything as Tim pulls out a handgun and shoots Jon in the face.

oOo

Jon is tired by the time he gets back to the Archives. 

His Archives? Can he still call them that? 

The left side of his face is a mess of shattered porcelain and blood and flesh. It is healing, but slowly now that he’s not surrounded by the Stranger’s Song. Perhaps the Beholding will still take him in and mend his wounds. The music is so much subtler here, but no less seamless with the place that had been built to be its temple. He is still carrying Tim, who he had had to knock out after the not-so-kind murder attempt that he truly could not fault the man for. But the Archivist cab no longer die from such simple injuries. It hurts, certainly, but he won’t die. 

He freezes when he sees Elias Bouchard approaching him.

The man’s face was unreadable, his eyes piercing and sharp. 

And the Archivist Knew that the man had known where Jon had been the entire time, and left him with the Stranger, had allowed Jon to become something that had almost left his friend to the mercy of the Unknowing.

The Archivist dropped Tim to the ground and lunged for the monster’s throat.

**Author's Note:**

> tbh not entirely sure where this came from. i've been slowly working on it for the past couple weeks and decided to 'finish it off' today, although it's obviously still a bit unfinished lol. maybe i'll write another chapter someday, but who knows.


End file.
